Written for @beauty-beast-week 2025. Prompt: Free Day!
I've been busy trying to get novel #1 published and school starts in about eight hours, but here's my little entry.
Summary: A curse unbroken — well, broken in part. The walls of his study are too green for Adam’s sanity, and the whispers in the forest are too loud.
· · ────── *.·:·. ❀ .·:·.* ────── · ·
Adam sat at his father’s desk, as the afternoon rain bathed the study in a blue haze. He heard the pitter-patter of rain on the balcony, hitting the stone like dull piano notes.
The summer of 1779 had been cloudy and wet. Adam received word that Spain had just entered the war. He would have joined his men against the British, he would have sailed to America if it had come to it – somewhere far from this forest, far from the whispers on the breeze.
Belle did not think it wise, not that it was even possible. The ink had yet to dry on the new Treaty of Alliance between France and the young country. It had only been February, and the year had not yet reached September. There was no telling what would come from this war, what would come from his country’s entanglement with the New World. He was surprised no one had come for him yet.
With the oak and sycamore in this forest, he would remain still, unchanged, until death found them. No war would come for Adam. There was no salvation from his curse.
He was reminded of this, when he would pen letters to some of his men who resided in Villeneuve, holding his white quill pen with claws; when he would walk past a wall overlaid with silver or gold, and catch a glimpse of his reflection; when he would lay beside Belle in their bed, pull her close, and she would reach for his horns, her gentle touch shattering his illusion.
The rain beat harder on the balcony, fast and quick like a clock running out of time. His father’s study became Adam’s. The walls were painted with a new green paint; emerald essence born of arsenic and copper. The red mahogany bookshelves contrasted against the green walls, piles of dusty papers and old books unopened since the time of his father’s death.
It had been years since the curse was broken – if only in part. His servants were free, and his people remembered who he was. What work was there to do, if only to satisfy Belle’s insistence on a return to some normalcy?
People in town whispered of the war, and of Adam’s involvement – or rather, his lack thereof. He came to the understanding the forest still held onto Villeneuve and the castle, keeping them hidden from the rest of France. Travelers had come and gone, passed through the town like ghosts. Nobody ever returned, and he wondered if everyone had forgotten Villeneuve.
The forest grew brave in summer. Ivy would climb the castle, thick bushes would appear overnight and cover the lawn. Adam’s most skilled gardeners could not tend to the grounds fast enough.
He never cared to stay outside for long, especially in the summer. The forest took his body and wouldn’t let him leave. Now it taunted him with overgrown bushes and strange whispers on the wind. If he were free, would he run far away from here? Would he take a hastily packed bag and disappear into the night? Would he flee to Paris, or to Italy? Would he sail across the ocean to fight for the New World?
Or, would he stay? In the same castle he died a thousand times in, and was reborn? Would he stay by his lady’s side, remain in their bed, continue to walk down these still halls?
Was he chasing something he never could find?
Adam kept up his attendance, would come to dinner and greet the servants, he came into town at Belle’s imploring. His tailors fitted him in reds and garnets, in blues deep as the sea.
Belle wouldn’t wear green. Her gowns were the color of sunset and rain, of a summer meadow and bright dawn. She would say that yellows and blues and reds suited her hair, her eyes.
Soon enough, after too many years, it all looked wrong for Adam. Belle was content to be confined to this half-life. He was not. The forest’s grip was still deeply lodged in their lives, and no gardener or tailor could hide that.
The rain stopped. Sunlight peaked through the clouds. Adam looked down at his empty desk, and at the green walls around him. Sunlit dust hung in the air like a golden haze.
He stood hastily. The walls sickened him, too green, too cloying. He left the castle grounds. It was a Thursday in August, as the earth like a flame was brightest before dusk. There was a lightness in the air, something bright and something pleasant. It was the deepest he had gone into the woods in years. Adam sank his feet into the earth. His grip was better than it was before the curse, he dipped his toes into the ground. It was cool and begged to envelop him. He walked down an overgrown path, between the birch and oak, over the thick understory. His horns kept getting caught on the branches above. Soon the woods gave way to a lake.
Light shimmered on the surface of the water. Twinkling like the light was woven like fabric, still and ever rippling. Belle was there, by the water. Her white dress blew gently in the wind, and her hair cascaded down her back in waves.
In her hazel eyes, he saw specks of gold like sunlight upon the waters. Her brown hair was deep and rich like the trees around them.
He realized at once, she was entangled with the forest, not separate, and he could not hate the woods without forsaking her. He suddenly wanted to see her in a green dress, a vibrant emerald like the walls of his study. He was bound to her, and bound to the forest.
In the body he was cursed in, he found her. She loved him as any other man, more than she had ever loved another before. Belle went into the meadow and picked flowers and grass. She curled them around his horns, flowers on his crown. Adam could never tire from the view. Never tire from her touch, her warmth, and her voice.
The forest had taken his body, and given him Belle in return.
Fiction with a mind on ecology and environmental themes are one of my favourites. Further topics from animal rights, energy sources, to disasters and dystopian society have only become more and more relevant. So, from across the six continents here are 10 EcoLit titles. (FYI, I try to provide content notes for all titles I review in the links.)
Children of the Sea by Igarashi Daisuke, translated by JN Productions, lettering Jose Macasocol
Adapted to an animated film in 2019, the award-winning five-volume-comic by Japanese artist Igarashi Daisuke, Children of the Sea is a bit of a mystery, with a somewhat nonlinear timeline. Further a gorgeous and mesmerizing tribute to the ocean and aquatic life as the ocean’s fish begin disappearing worldwide.
The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-eun, translated by Lizzie Buehler
This the first translated book by Korean author Yun Ko-eun is the sort of trim ecolit novel that begs the question of just how dark, dark tourism can get. Yona Ko works for Jungle which specializes in travel packages to disaster areas. If that sounds rather problematic it also has a corporate culture that’s unsurprisingly very much the kind with a missing stair. So, the ten-year company veteran ends up on a review trip to one of the least lucrative destinations in Southeast Asia. A tropical island that decades ago was the site of a genocide and giant sink hole, now a lake. Initially coming off more as a paradise, the island however is hiding an all too deadly side.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
From the Noble winning Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, this novel is ostensibly a murder mystery. However, page by page Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead examines climate change, predation, exploitation, diet, and belief. The reality that man is an animal whose attempts to forget or detach one’s relationship and own position in nature is lethal.
Eclipse Our Sins by Tlotlo Tsamaase
From Motswana author Tlotlo Tsamaase Eclipse Our Sins is an achingly lyrical novelette that appeared in SFF Clarkeswold Magazine, Issue 159 December 2019 (+ audio version). It presents an apocalyptic earth ravaged by climate change with a largely immoral mankind split in increasing class disparity. And abused Mama Earth is angry…
Fauna by Christiane Vadnais, translated by translated by Pablo Strauss
Speculative fiction holds real life hallmarks of dystopia and apocalypse in this debut work of fiction by Quebecois author Christiane Vadnais. Delivering thought-provoking expressions of 10 interconnected cli-fi vignettes with a real strain of horror, it sometimes comes off as more for shock value. Yet, Fauna is nevertheless a title which can stay with the reader.
Gwen in Green by Hugh Zachary
Gwen in Green is a story beget from the brutal transformation of 1,200 acres due to construction of the Brunswick Nuclear Plant in North Carolina during the early 1970s. This sexy eco-horror pulp by Hugh Zachary, revived in Paperbacks from Hell, personifies not just nature but a decade.
The Seeds written by Ann Nocenti and art by David Aja
Years in the making, this speculative eco-tech thriller comic by US journalist and writer Ann Nocenti with artist David Aja is an uncanny dystopian and, in many ways, strangely prescient book. There are aliens, misinformation, conspiracy theories and a toxic environment… Words don’t really do credit to the absolute eerie monochromatic colour scheme art either. One comic best to just dive into yourself. (BONUS: Ann Nocenti is also responsible for one of my favourite DC Comics illustrated by John Van Fleet, Poison Ivy: Cast Shadows.)
Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World edited by Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro, translated by Fábio Fernandes
Solarpunk is a genre that has grown, especially over the last decade. From a country that does in the real world have a high majority percentage of its energy from renewable sources, it is valuable that this 2012 Brazilian anthology is available in translation to not be forgotten in the canon.
(BONUS: Looking for something more hopeful and soothing? I highly recommend the Hugo award winning, philosophical, solarpunk Monk & Robot novella duology by US author Becky Chambers)
The Story Collector by Evie Gaughan
A historical romance from an Irish author weaving local folklore, additionally this is a novel importantly about the human link to nature. How it helps people in some of the darkest times.The verdant wintry setting and time, as the light of the sun starts increasing, acts almost as a living character influencing its characters separated by 100 years, along with the consequences of man’s hubris and disrespect.
The Swan Book by Alexis Wright
Published almost ten years ago this post-apocalyptic novel from a notable Australian Indigenous author remains a vivid and powerful literary saga today. In a world devastated by climate change and subsequent governmental collapse, its Aboriginal main character Oblivia undergoing much suffering tries to achieve self-determination. Heavy, with an eye on history, full of dense metaphors, symbols including swans, and links with folklore, the text is well worth the effort and praise.
New Post has been published on The Bouncing Tigger Reads
New Post has been published on http://www.tiggerreviews.com/more-about-crows/
More about Crows
Nature as Cultural Artifact
A guest post by:
Julie Christine Johnson
I didn’t set out to write an eco-lit novel, to make a political statement with my story. I am a writer of landscapes that transport readers from their worlds into those of my imagination and of characters whose conflicts and choices are urgent and relevant to my readers’ souls. I don’t write with a genre in mind; I’m a storyteller who often discovers her themes many drafts later, when the bones of a story have been fleshed out and its heart is beating strongly.
THE CROWS OF BEARA was meant to be my love song to Ireland. A place was all I had in my pocket when I sat down with my notebook to begin sketching characters. I set the place aside and focused on the who, for it is from the characters that my stories are built. WHERE gives me a foundation; WHO is the framework. I discovered a protagonist and a main character linked by the same weakness and the same strength: addiction and art. Bringing them to stand before each other on a dividing line was a third “character” which I met by chance in my research: the Red-billed chough, a species of crow which cycles on and off the endangered list as one nesting ground thrives and another is threatened. It is found along the southwest coast of Ireland, where cliff meets pasture on one end and ocean on the other. In CROWS, a copper mine would bring needed jobs to a struggling community; it would also destroy the habitat of this beloved small black bird with a crimson beak and feet. The chough became the book’s touchstone.
Deep into revisions, months after CROWS had been accepted for publication by Ashland Creek Press, I met an artist-anthropologist using 3-D photography in a breathtaking marriage of art and science to preserve natural artifacts gathered from manned and unmanned space missions. Through her art, she shows that our cultural heritage is alive in these rocks gathered from places so distant, the mind bends in trying to comprehend. In talking with her, I realized I had been dancing around but unable to name the central core of my characters’ artistic drive. Nature is a cultural artifact that we have the power to preserve, and art can be a unifying force when politics threaten to tear us apart.
There’s a scene midway through THE CROWS OF BEARA where Annie sees Daniel’s art for the first time. And in observing his own work through her eyes, he realizes the power of what he does, how his art can change minds, perspectives, lives. Art as an act of resistance and healing is one of the major themes of the book and it’s very much how I feel about what I do as an artist. Words are my voice, my sword, my hand out to the universe. Art, whether it’s visual, literary, musical, or of the body, connects us to ourselves, to each other, to the greater world. It’s what keeps us moving forward toward light in times of greatest darkness.
ECOLIT @ Pulau Ubin ytd :D Fun times trying to avoid getting hit by vehicles, talking to the friendly villages, praying that Guan Ru doesn't crash into anyone and visit all the locations and scenery (: What a great way to relax and forget about all the crap about sch! #Ecolit #PulauUbin
So I mentioned this article in a #Utopyacon panel yesterday and thought I would post about it. It’s Scholastic’s top predictions for 2013 and the fabulous Jen Rees (who worked with me to edit CLICKS) forwarded it to me at the beginning of the year to remind me how on track the book was.
CLICKS hits #2 - light Sci Fi and #8 - strong heroines. But she really sent it to me because of #10 - nature runs amok. After months of people telling me to bury the environmental message, here was at least some sort of corroboration that stories like CLICKS are wanted / needed. This was corroborated by the head kid lit buyer of the NY library system predicting EcoLit was a coming trend.
So here's to going indie and getting to stick with your story. Because it's impossible to follow trends but if you're lucky they might follow you.
As for this list, what do you think? Did they get it right? (I'll give a free ebook of CLICKS to anyone who shares or comments on this post.)
